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Considering the current state of the economy, its perfectly understandable that even if you're committed to making positive changes in your life regarding your environmental impact, you want to do them as inexpensively as possible.
Fortunately, one of the most effective ways of reducing your personal carbon footprint is also one of the most inexpensive: Enroll in a green power program with your utility. More and more places have green power programs—check the US DOE green power map to check out options in your state—and most of them are fairly self-explanatory in regards to signing up.
But Planet Green is going to make it even easier for Chicago residents: Here's a quick run through of your green power options in the Windy City.
Customer Choice & PowerPath
What happens when you sign up for a green power program is that while ComEd still charges you for delivery of your electricity, you change who actually supplies your electricity. There's a rather large list of electricity suppliers on the PowerPath website, but most of these don't service residential customers and/or don't have green energy programs. ComEd doesn't make it nearly as easy as some other utilities in this regards.
BlueStar Energy Services & RECs
Eliminating non-residential and non-green electricity suppliers leaves us with BlueStar Energy Services.
What happens when BlueStar is your electricity supplier is that, though the actual electricity flowing into your house is no different than your neighbors', BlueStar buys Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to offset the electricity which would've been generated from fossil fuels. In this case 100% of the energy that these RECs represent is generated from wind power.
What happens when BlueStar is your electricity supplier is that, though the actual electricity flowing into your house is no different than your neighbors', BlueStar buys Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to offset the electricity which would've been generated from fossil fuels. In this case 100% of the energy that these RECs represent is generated from wind power.
Signing up is done online—you'll need your ComEd account number and meter number—and should take you only a few minutes.
According to BlueStar, replacing all your fossil fuel generated electricity and replacing it with wind power through their program will cost the average household between $3-5 extra per month.
Your Small Contribution With Big Green Payoff
You may not want to pay anything extra right now, but that small monthly contribution towards green energy really does so much in reducing your carbon footprint, and all you have to do is sign up.
As I've said before, just because you're using renewable energy (well, in this case bought renewable energy credits) doesn't mean you can stop conserving energy. Both Planet Green and TreeHugger have plenty of great tips on ways to conserve electricity.
